VF-17 Tommy Blackburn's way
Hi Hurricane3!
Another good suggestion is given by Cdr. Tom Blackburn in his WWII written account of VF-17 (
thank you again, Jagd!) tours of duty.
What I like a lot about this book is that Cdr. Blackburn talks about the training/break-in period a naval squadron must take in order to obtain carrier qualification even if its pilots are already experienced. Other WWII pilots wrote very little about their training period, if not at all.
Coupled with the fact that "Jolly Rogers" pilots were breaking-in brand new F4U1 Corsairs, with all the teething problems early "birdcage" F4U1's had, the account is breathtaking.
Despite that the Royal Navy later developed a curved, banked approach to the carrier stern, designed to overcome the pilot's built-in blindness of the Corsair long nose during the final approach, a landing tecnique subsequently adopted by the US Navy as well, all of VF-17 pilots obtained their car-qual with the birdcage Corsair, doing the standard US Navy straight approach based exclusively on LSO signals.
It's truly remarkable and it speaks loudly about the pilotmanship those guys had.
The later F4U 1-A variant the Jolly Rogers deployed with, tried to cure some of the Corsair visibility problems with a raised seat and a semi-bubble canopy, while the nasty stall carachteristics of the birdcage Corsair were improved thanks to a leading edge, small, wing spoiler developed by VF-17's technical officer. Even the first Corsair bomb rack was developed by VF-17 and they carried out the very first Corsair ground attack in WWII. Strangely enough, no aviation history book reports that, as well as the fact that early Corsair carrier deployment refusal by the US Navy was not due to the fact that the US Navy judged Corsairs unsuitable to carrier ops, but merely to the logistic problem of keeping VF-17 home carrier USS Bunker Hill supplied with Corsair spares. At the end of 1943, VF-17 was the only carrier group equipped with F4U1-As, while every other carrier group flew F6F Hellcats, this posed a serious supply logistic problem at the time. Land-based Corsair Marine groups were already operating in the Solomons and the supply line there was not a problem, hence VF-17, the very first Navy Corsair squadron, was land-based with their Corsairs maintainained by Marine ground crews.
Cdr. Blackburn describes step-by-step all of the takeoff and landing procedures a naval pilot must follow down to the deck personnel's signals, behaviour and color-coded jerseys worn. I remember the sequence very well, as I adopted it immediately after reading it.
- Start the engine with full brakes on, no flaps, trim the aircraft considerably up, rev the engine slowly to full power, holding the stick completely back to avoid nosing over.
- Release brakes, as soon as the plane starts rolling, push the stick fully forward to force the tail lift sooner than it would normally do. This allows for a much quicker airspeed gain. Be swift to counteract engine torque with the rudder.
- As soon as the tail lifts, control the plane attitude to avoid again hitting the deck with the propeller and drop full flaps right before reaching the deck end. This allows for less drag and further airspeed gain, as Erufle rightly pointed out.
- Leave the deck, lift the undercarriage immediately while allowing the aircraft to gain speed and altitude naturally, without pulling on the stick. Raise the flaps in quick steps to limit drag and adjust trim avoiding any steep climb, again to gain airspeed quickly.
- Don't get scared if the aircraft drops a few feet while leving the deck, let it gain airspeed, I never crashed even with a fully loaded plane. If you pull on the stick now, a stall is right around the corner and, if you crash, the carrier bow will plow you.
- Start veering to the right as soon as you leave the deck to move out of the carrier path and to allow for the next takeoff run. Join the squadron waiting pattern to allow grouping up before getting en route to the assigned mission.
- At this point, you should be well above stall speed, flying at over 100 kts, and in full control of your aircraft even if heavily loaded.
Cdr. Blackburn added a personal touch from his vaste flying and instructing experience by moving the stick to the right slightly. According to him, this applied pressure on the right wheel helped counteract the monster torque unleashed by a 2,000hp, firewalled radial engine and had the airplane into a veering attitude immediately as soon as the deck was left.
I tried this latter trick, but, to me, it did not appear to make a big difference in CFS2, which cannot simulate every little real life nuisance. Right rudder plus additional right ailerons were a heavy compensation for engine torque, the sudden right-veering response of my aircraft at such low speed was a tad too much for my tastes.
The above sequence, coupled with Jagdflieger's very good suggestion of using stock Flight Models for AI planes and a custom taylored FM for the human pilot, should do the trick.
Flap lift data is controlled by record #1001, "flight dynamics", of each aircraft *.air file, I usually increase flap lift in increments of 0.10 at a time, until I reach satisfactory results. The airfile editing utility AirEd can be found here in the CFS2-Utils section. Engine and propeller "power-scalar" are part of each aircraft.cfg file and, if not present, can be copied and pasted from another aircraft.cfg and then edited to taste.
One more thing to remember is that the aircraft.cfg file influences the user's aircraft only, while AI aircrafts are flown by the sim engine according to their airfile.
I hope this helps.
Cheers!
KH :ernae:
